The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games

The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games PDF Author: Gabriele Aroni
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350152331
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Video games are among the most popular media on the planet, and billions of people inhabit these virtual worlds on a daily basis. This book investigates the architecture of video games, the buildings, roads and cities in which gamers play out their roles. Examining both the aesthetic aspects and symbolic roles of video game architecture as they relate to gameplay, Gabriele Aroni tackles a number of questions, including: - How digital architecture relates to real architecture - Where the inspiration for digital gaming architecture comes from, and how it moves into new directions - How the design of virtual architecture influences gameplay and storytelling. Looking at how architecture in video games communicates and interacts with players, this book combines semiotics and architecture theory to display how architecture is used in a variety of situations, with different aims and results. Using case studies from NaissanceE, Assassin's Creed II and Final Fantasy XV, The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games discusses the techniques used to create successful virtual spaces and proposes a framework to analyse video game architecture, ultimately explaining how to employ architectural solutions in video games in a systematic and effective way.

The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games

The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games PDF Author: Gabriele Aroni
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350152331
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book

Book Description
Video games are among the most popular media on the planet, and billions of people inhabit these virtual worlds on a daily basis. This book investigates the architecture of video games, the buildings, roads and cities in which gamers play out their roles. Examining both the aesthetic aspects and symbolic roles of video game architecture as they relate to gameplay, Gabriele Aroni tackles a number of questions, including: - How digital architecture relates to real architecture - Where the inspiration for digital gaming architecture comes from, and how it moves into new directions - How the design of virtual architecture influences gameplay and storytelling. Looking at how architecture in video games communicates and interacts with players, this book combines semiotics and architecture theory to display how architecture is used in a variety of situations, with different aims and results. Using case studies from NaissanceE, Assassin's Creed II and Final Fantasy XV, The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games discusses the techniques used to create successful virtual spaces and proposes a framework to analyse video game architecture, ultimately explaining how to employ architectural solutions in video games in a systematic and effective way.

The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games

The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games PDF Author: Gabriele Aroni
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350152323
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book

Book Description
Video games are among the most popular media on the planet, and billions of people inhabit these virtual worlds on a daily basis. This book investigates the architecture of video games, the buildings, roads and cities in which gamers play out their roles. Examining both the aesthetic aspects and symbolic roles of video game architecture as they relate to gameplay, Gabriele Aroni tackles a number of questions, including: - How digital architecture relates to real architecture - Where the inspiration for digital gaming architecture comes from, and how it moves into new directions - How the design of virtual architecture influences gameplay and storytelling. Looking at how architecture in video games communicates and interacts with players, this book combines semiotics and architecture theory to display how architecture is used in a variety of situations, with different aims and results. Using case studies from NaissanceE, Assassin's Creed II and Final Fantasy XV, The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games discusses the techniques used to create successful virtual spaces and proposes a framework to analyse video game architecture, ultimately explaining how to employ architectural solutions in video games in a systematic and effective way.

Video Game Spaces

Video Game Spaces PDF Author: Michael Nitsche
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262293013
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
An exploration of how we see, use, and make sense of modern video game worlds. The move to 3D graphics represents a dramatic artistic and technical development in the history of video games that suggests an overall transformation of games as media. The experience of space has become a key element of how we understand games and how we play them. In Video Game Spaces, Michael Nitsche investigates what this shift means for video game design and analysis. Navigable 3D spaces allow us to crawl, jump, fly, or even teleport through fictional worlds that come to life in our imagination. We encounter these spaces through a combination of perception and interaction. Drawing on concepts from literary studies, architecture, and cinema, Nitsche argues that game spaces can evoke narratives because the player is interpreting them in order to engage with them. Consequently, Nitsche approaches game spaces not as pure visual spectacles but as meaningful virtual locations. His argument investigates what structures are at work in these locations, proceeds to an in-depth analysis of the audiovisual presentation of gameworlds, and ultimately explores how we use and comprehend their functionality. Nitsche introduces five analytical layers—rule-based space, mediated space, fictional space, play space, and social space—and uses them in the analyses of games that range from early classics to recent titles. He revisits current topics in game research, including narrative, rules, and play, from this new perspective. Video Game Spaces provides a range of necessary arguments and tools for media scholars, designers, and game researchers with an interest in 3D game worlds and the new challenges they pose.

Beyond Choices

Beyond Choices PDF Author: Miguel Sicart
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262019787
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
How computer games can be designed to create ethically relevant experiences for players. Today's blockbuster video games—and their never-ending sequels, sagas, and reboots—provide plenty of excitement in high-resolution but for the most part fail to engage a player's moral imagination. In Beyond Choices, Miguel Sicart calls for a new generation of video and computer games that are ethically relevant by design. In the 1970s, mainstream films—including The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, and Taxi Driver—filled theaters but also treated their audiences as thinking beings. Why can't mainstream video games have the same moral and aesthetic impact? Sicart argues that it is time for games to claim their place in the cultural landscape as vehicles for ethical reflection. Sicart looks at games in many manifestations: toys, analog games, computer and video games, interactive fictions, commercial entertainments, and independent releases. Drawing on philosophy, design theory, literary studies, aesthetics, and interviews with game developers, Sicart provides a systematic account of how games can be designed to challenge and enrich our moral lives. After discussing such topics as definition of ethical gameplay and the structure of the game as a designed object, Sicart offers a theory of the design of ethical game play. He also analyzes the ethical aspects of game play in a number of current games, including Spec Ops: The Line, Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer, Fallout New Vegas, and Anna Anthropy's Dys4Ia. Games are designed to evoke specific emotions; games that engage players ethically, Sicart argues, enable us to explore and express our values through play.

Space Time Play

Space Time Play PDF Author: Friedrich von Borries
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 376438414X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Computer and video games are leaving the PC and conquering the arena of everyday life in the form of mobile applications—the result is new types of cities and architecture. How do these games alter our perception of real and virtual space? What can the designers of physical and digital worlds learn from one another?

Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies

Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies PDF Author: Dietmar Meinel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110675234
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
While video games have blossomed into the foremost expression of contemporary popular culture over the past decades, their critical study occupies a fringe position in American Studies. In its engagement with video games, this book contributes to their study but with a thematic focus on a particularly important subject matter in American Studies: spatiality. The volume explores the production, representation, and experience of places in video games from the perspective of American Studies. Contributions critically interrogate the use of spatial myths ("wilderness," "frontier," or "city upon a hill"), explore games as digital borderlands and contact zones, and offer novel approaches to geographical literacy. Eventually, Playing the Field II brings the rich theoretical repertoire of the study of space in American Studies into conversation with questions about the production, representation, and experience of space in video games.

Toward a Ludic Architecture

Toward a Ludic Architecture PDF Author: Steffen P. Walz
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557285631
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
“Toward a Ludic Architecture†is a pioneering publication, architecturally framing play and games as human practices in and of space. Filling the gap in literature, Steffen P. Walz considers game design theory and practice alongside architectural theory and practice, asking: how are play and games architected? What kind of architecture do they produce and in what way does architecture program play and games? What kind of architecture could be produced by playing and gameplaying?

Interactive Storytelling

Interactive Storytelling PDF Author: Mirjam Vosmeer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031222989
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 714

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Book Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2022, held in Santa Cruz, CA, USA, in December 2022. The 30 full papers and 10 short papers, presented together with 17 posters and demos, were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions.

Trigger Happy

Trigger Happy PDF Author: Steven Poole
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 162872224X
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 999

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Book Description
The Edge calls Trigger Happy a "seminal piece of work." For the first time ever, an aficionado with a knowledge of art, culture, and a real love of gaming takes a critical look at the future of our videogames, and compares their aesthetic and economic impact on society to that of film. Thirty years after the invention of the simplest of games, more videogames are played by adults than children. This revolutionary book is the first-ever academically worthy and deeply engaging critique of one of today's most popular forms of play: videogames are on track to supersede movies as the most innovative form of entertainment in the new century.

On Video Games

On Video Games PDF Author: Soraya Murray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786732505
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Today over half of all American households own a dedicated game console and gaming industry profits trump those of the film industry worldwide. In this book, Soraya Murray moves past the technical discussions of games and offers a fresh and incisive look at their cultural dimensions. She critically explores blockbusters likeThe Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid, Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed to show how they are deeply entangled with American ideological positions and contemporary political, cultural and economic conflicts.As quintessential forms of visual material in the twenty-first century, mainstream games both mirror and spur larger societal fears, hopes and dreams, and even address complex struggles for recognition. This book examines both their elaborately constructed characters and densely layered worlds, whose social and environmental landscapes reflect ideas about gender, race, globalisation and urban life. In this emerging field of study, Murray provides novel theoretical approaches to discussing games and playable media as culture. Demonstrating that games are at the frontline of power relations, she reimagines how we see them - and more importantly how we understand them.